Using Excel in business critical operations is risky to the point of recklessness. Phocas have just published an article highlighting seven problems with spreadsheets. The problems are susceptibility to human errors difficulties in troubleshooting lack of agility lack of collaborative features lack of support for rapid decision-making degree of complexity for the average business user […]
Governments have to stop undermining IT security
Microsoft has said that the recent wave of cyber attacks that has hit 150 countries should be treated by governments as a “wake-up” call. Security experts have constantly warned intelligence agencies about the risks of weakening security to make it easier to undertake surveillance. As UK hospitals are plunged into chaos we can see the […]
Do you really need machine learning?
I have a lot of sympathy for the view expressed in the following tweet Good CS expert says: Most firms that thinks they want advanced AI/ML really just need linear regression on cleaned-up data. — robin hanson (@robinhanson) November 28, 2016 Many organizations who dive into machine learning haven’t even started to extract value from […]
Microsoft “FedExNet”
People, in my experience, tend to find it hard to get their head around many “big data” concepts. It’s only when they attempt to implement initiatives, and are frustrated by the basics, that they start to “get it”. One of the most basic things that people seem to misunderstand is the challenge of moving data […]
Google reveals performance of its custom AI chips
Google has just release performance data for its Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) custom machine learning chips. TPUs are 15-20x faster than GPUs and CPUs when running deep learning applications 30-80x more power efficient (operations per Watt) frugal in terms of lines of code required to control them (their deep learning applications are implemented using 100-1500 […]